by Ellyn, Court
The scar-eared servant filled Lord Galt’s cup, again to the brim.
Good man. Galt lifted the goblet, sloshed it, slurped.
Stinking pig … almost over thank Ana …
… no debate like this in twenty Assemblies …
… Athlem’s face like a cherry … cherry tarts …
My poor sweet … Rorin passed a scribbled note to Rhoslyn.
She didn’t notice the slip of parchment but watched the king, fretful. What will this solve? Father …
Patience … right moment …
Keth, quiet him …
Let ‘em have it, Rhorek …
Twits … watch ….The servant cast a sidelong glance toward the dais, then over the highborns.
Don’t, Kieryn thought under the intolerable buzzing. Two Falcons flanked the high table. He thought they might be Captain Jareg and the pretty lieutenant. Too close to the dais, Lander, back off … Jareg shifted forward.
“And you, Lander,” Rhorek said among the rattle of voices, “can you honestly say that you’ve not sent parties across the Bryna to retrieve your losses—while ‘accidentally’ herding some of the Fieran sheep with your own? How many years has it been since we decreed all your raids illegal and punishable by fines and imprisonment? I believe those were the penalties, yes. Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten?”
Lander’s fists knotted. “So I am to sit by while those bastards steal everything—sire?”
Calm down, Da …
Rhorek’s hands balled, too. Keth placed a hand on his shoulder.
Watch yourself …
Don’t touch me! No fool …
Fool!—won’t lift a finger …
Daft bastards dungeon dead … Do it! He gets his war …
Stop! Kieryn staggered back into the wall, fell hard to his knees. Ana, make it stop!
Rhorek stood and declared, “I will not be remembered—or forgotten—by being the same breed of king that my father and his forebears were, avenging wrongs by doing wrong. Isn’t that what you’re asking me to do, Lander?”
Kieryn felt Leshan’s hands on his shoulders. “Are you sick? I’ll help you out.”
“Wha—my head,” he gasped. “Tell me you’re hearing this. Please.”
“I’ve been listening to everything they’re saying.” Leshan spoke as if to an addled child.
“No …”
“If we attack the Fierans,” Rhorek said, “nothing is solved. We only risk open war. I have treated with Shadryk, promising that all disagreements between our peoples will be dealt with across a table, not a river and not a battlefield. But you, Lander, and you, Athlem, seek to make a liar of me.”
Kieryn peered around Leshan. What was he saying? He would find something to help … fetch him something … lost his mind. The servant had drifted closer to the dais, casting feverish glances around the Hall, at Rhorek. He wouldn’t strike here, surely not here. Shouldn’t Kieryn shout a warning, alert the Guard? He tried to speak, maybe he did, but the buzzing …
Rhorek’s words had become whips swathed in the throbbing buzzing swirling cocoon of voices—“Men may think this king weak or passive in his hopes that peace is contagious, but no man will think me false. And if my suppositions concerning your actions are correct, repercussions will follow—at the expense of your dignity, not mine. You follow?”
Now, now. Do it! The servant set the flask on the table, lowered his arm; the glint of steel dropped into his hand. Ana … mercy. He broke into a run. Straight for the dais.
Kieryn shoved Leshan aside, surged to his feet.
The argument faltered. The voices stilled. The assassin caught sight of Kieryn charging him, stopped, decided he could make it and ran on.
Kieryn roared and threw his hand forward. A blinding bolt of light zigzagged down his arm and out his palm. Like lightning from a storm, the bolt speared the assassin’s chest, danced in his bared teeth, set the apron ablaze. Screams and curses resounded as lords and ladies dove away. The assassin landed under the high table. A double-edged dagger skittered from his hand.
Kieryn fell with him, senseless to everything but the fire in his flesh.
~~~~
6
“His name was Jornh.” Athlem of Locmar looked down at the corpse. A raw black hole gaped in the chest. The air stank of burnt meat and singed hair and hot wine. The white apron had flared with open flame, catching the dead man’s legs and the high table’s cloth; someone had panicked and dumped a jug of wine on the fire. Luckily the wine had been diluted with water. The highborns had been evacuated from the Hall, and Kelyn and Leshan had carried Kieryn, unconscious, to his rooms; Alovi had followed, calling frantically for Master Odran.
Keth had seen it, but what had he seen? He didn’t want to believe it. His son … gentle and strange, always so strange … but Keth couldn’t afford to think about Kieryn right now.
Athlem said, “My wife hired him.”
“Bysana?” asked Rhorek.
“She said Jornh might have a rough appearance but she was certain he’d serve our needs, and so he did. He was with us nearly a year, since the last Assembly. He never caused trouble or complained. He became indispensable to us. I couldn’t imagine leaving him behind, saw no reason to. Am I really so blind?”
Keth gauged Athlem’s words, his body language. Was he pleading ignorance to save himself? His hands fidgeted nervously.
“I … I knew he had family in Fiera. But so many living between the Ristbrooke and the Bryna have Fieran ties. Even Bysana. She has an aunt there, if you’ll recall, sire, at Arwythe. They write often.”
“Do they?” Rhorek’s face became slowly pallid.
Athlem must’ve realized the implications of his words, for he dropped to his knees and grabbed the hem of Rhorek’s tunic. “My king, for twenty years you have ruled justly and mercifully. Jornh was a member of my household. Judge me as you see fit.” In his fifties, Athlem had remained as fit as a youth, a necessary precaution when his lands were under continual threat from the Fieran side of the river, and so he looked at odds with the role of decoy, a doe leading the wolves away from the fawn.
Keth could see that the plea moved Rhorek deeply. The king placed a hand on Athlem’s shoulder. “Being just is my intention, sir. So I must be thorough.”
“She couldn’t have known.” He looked half-mad with panic. “Goddess have mercy, she couldn’t have known what this murderer meant to do.”
“Keth,” said Rhorek. “Send for Bysana.”
When she arrived, Keth could tell she’d been crying. Her fist clutched a limp silk handkerchief, and her long pale hair was falling loose around her face; whether from fleeing the Hall with the rest or sobbing into a pillow, only Bysana could say. She spared not a glance for her husband, but looked upon the assassin’s wound and pressed the kerchief to her mouth and closed her eyes in horror.
“Did you know him before you hired him?” asked Rhorek, trying to look as impassive as the face of Mount Drenéleth and failing.
“No,” she said, lowering the kerchief.
Athlem exhaled in relief. He set his hands on her shoulders. She cringed away from his touch.
“But you did know what he planned to do,” Rhorek stated.
The longer she was silent, the more distraught Athlem’s expression. She raised black eyes that were tired of hiding pain. The flood of hurt apparent there caused Keth to pity her. “When my aunt told me what King Shadryk hoped Jornh would accomplish, I saw no reason to stop him.”
“Ah, Mother’s mercy upon us, Bysana, why?”
Athlem’s outburst convinced Keth once and for all of his innocence.
Bysana looked only at Rhorek. “Was I not your first mistress?”
The words were like a fist to Keth’s gut. Rhorek looked too puzzled for words.
“Seems everyone has forgotten,” she said. “Everyone but myself.”
In truth, Keth had forgotten. Prince Rhorek had so many girls on a string that even his best friend couldn’
t keep them straight. But Bysana had been special and nobly born; Keth thought Rhorek would choose her for his bride. Now he understood why Bysana always looked ill at the Assemblies.
“What a child I was. I thought sharing the prince’s bed meant my place at his side was secure.”
Athlem groaned and collapsed into a chair, burying his face in his hands.
“I wasn’t sure when Jornh would strike. I didn’t think he’d wait a year. My only hope was that I wouldn’t have to watch you die.”
Ah, the heartbreak in Rhorek’s face. He had nothing else to say. Bysana watched him drift away up the dais. Voice soft and wounded, she asked, “Will you toss me into your dungeons, king? Lop off my head, perhaps?”
Rhorek reached for his goblet. “Get her out of my sight, Keth.”
Bysana didn’t resist when Keth took her elbow. “Are there any others?” he asked.
“Others?”
“Besides the three?”
Her face was blank. “Three? No, only Jornh.”
Rhorek set down the goblet and looked at her, alarmed. Keth provided what comfort he could: “He must’ve brought them inside the walls during the races.”
Reaching for a fresh flask in the middle of the table, Rhorek said, “Looks like your son was right after all. Be sure to pass along word that the threat is past. And, praise Ana, we have Kieryn to thank for that.”
~~~~
Kelyn paced the length and breadth of Kieryn’s rooms, while Master Odran bent over his brother’s right hand. The flesh of the palm had reddened and bubbled with blisters. Odran meticulously pressed a needle into the base of each one to let the fluid escape, then smeared a thick paste of silverthorn and wolf’s muzzle extract from Kieryn’s wrist to his fingertips. “Damnedest thing,” Odran muttered, shaking his shaggy white head. “Wish I’d seen it. Might be better able to help him. Don’t understand this swoon. Out cold.” He wrapped the hand loosely in linen strips. Despite his firm handling of the injury, Kieryn neither opened his eyes nor reacted to pain.
Alovi sat at Kieryn’s feet, wringing her hands. “He will wake up though?” she demanded. “He’s not … we’re not going to lose him?”
Kelyn turned sharply on the rug. “Mother, how can you ask that?” Goddess, he needed a bottle of Doreli red all to himself. He came to stand over his mother, hands on her shoulders. Strangely, his own right hand tingled, similar to the times it fell asleep and blood rushed back into his fingers.
“Pulse and breathing are normal,” Odran replied, his soft steady voice a balm. “But frankly, my lady, if what you say you saw is what happened, I can’t determine if m’ lord Kieryn’s not burned on the inside, too.”
“Oh, Mother,” Alovi whimpered. She took Kieryn’s healthy hand in hers, smoothed straight his unresponsive fingers. The black stone on his middle finger looked like a window on a starless night.
“Only ever heard of such things in stories,” the physician was saying, returning his herbs to the medicine box. The glass bottles clinked as if squabbling over space. “Stories about the avedrin.”
“No!” Alovi exclaimed. The bottles stopped squabbling, and Master Odran glanced up from his box.
Kelyn stared hard at the swaddling about his brother’s hand. “The avedrin are just legend.”
“Of course,” Odran conceded, but only because arguing with his lord’s heir was not a wise tactic for prolonged employment. “I’ll not be far away. Soon as he wakes, I’ll want to see him.”
~~~~
Among the war paraphernalia in his study, Keth poured Rhorek a goblet of Mosegi sweet. He filled the bottom of a second goblet as well, but when he drank, he didn’t taste the wine. Nor did he remember folding himself into his desk chair. “What will you do with her?”
“Ana, help me, I don’t know.”
The events of the day had finally stopped spinning inside Keth’s head and settled with the dusk. He knew his course and dreaded it. How to counsel a king against his desires? Keth looked his friend in the eye and said, “I think the time has come, Rhorek.”
“For what?” He sounded both suspicious and certain.
“To put aside ideals, to face reality.”
“I’ll not declare war on the Fierans,” he insisted.
“A war has already begun! And Bysana is our first casualty.”
“That was personal!”
“War is personal, sire. I take Shadryk’s attempt on your life very personally. Whether or not you choose to see it, what happened today is far bigger than Bysana’s heartbreak. This has been in the planning for at least a year, probably much longer, and Bysana wasn’t pulling the strings.”
They sat in taut silence while Rhorek sipped his wine, absorbing what Keth had said and pretending he hadn’t said it.
Keth persisted. “Sire, the Fierans have challenged us both with their persistence to kill you. Obviously they have little fear of us. That Shadryk thought he could assassinate you in my home, the home of the War Commander himself, it’s more than a challenge, it’s an affront, an insult!”
“You would send men and women to die over an insult? I thought we had progressed beyond those primitive urges.”
Keth exhaled, reining in his temper. “You have done everything that is humanly possible to provide the peace that you promised us when we crowned you. We have extended our trade over land and by sea. We have not fought a war with the Fierans since our fathers died eighteen years ago. But clearly Shadryk believes this to be weakness, not strength.”
“Let Shadryk believe as he chooses! Fine. We’ll continue—”
“No, it’s not fine,” roared Keth, fist landing atop the desk. “I urge you to assert your strength in arms, convince the Fierans they have not stricken a lizard hiding under a rock, but riled a dragon. Sire, you have enough force behind you to make it seem so. Because we’ve avoided war this long, our military numbers surpass any army our fathers led into battle. And that’s only counting our troops from Aralorr and Evaronna. We may be able to make an ally of Leania. The Fierans raid across their border as well—”
“You think the Fierans haven’t had time to build numbers and find allies, too?”
“Of course, I’ve considered that, but we’ve a sufficient force to match them.”
Rhorek shook his head balefully. “To ask so many to die for one man … no.”
“You’re their king, Rhorek.”
“I’m just a man, Keth.”
“You’re their king first. Don’t you know that every one of your knights would trade his or her life for yours?”
“That’s the point, Keth. I don’t want a single one of my people to become a sacrifice for me.”
“It’s not for you, it’s for their king. There’s a difference. The Black Falcon is the symbol for order, justice, and peace in Aralorr. If the Fierans take that away, we have chaos.”
“But the Fierans failed to take it away—three times.”
“Still trusting in the grace of Ana …” Keth sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If you fail to demonstrate your strength, to force the Fierans to reexamine their impression of you, they will keep trying, and one day Ana will blink, and they’ll kill you. You think your people wouldn’t retaliate with everything they’ve got until Shadryk and his three sons are dead? And consider this: you have no legitimate sons of your own, and no heir.”
The king leapt to his feet and loomed over the desk. “Don’t talk to me as if I’m unaware of that!”
Undaunted, Keth added, “Then certainly you’re aware of this: when the Fierans kill you, the responsibility of electing a new king falls on your vassals, and with neither a clear picture of whom you would have succeed you, nor one lord claiming military or popular dominance, they will fight one another. Your realm will be broken by civil war—while they defend themselves against the Fierans. So, whichever side of the coin you look at, men and women die. United under a single banner, or torn.”
“Shadows! Just shadows you talk of.” Rhorek paced off his rage.
Neither a slight man nor pretty, he resembled a hungry hound ready to lunge.
“Not shadows, Rhorek. Probabilities. Listen to me, please. Every year that has passed in which you’ve not named a successor, I’ve had to consider this issue and everything that may result from it. Though I urge you to declare a state of war, I understand that your decision is yours alone, and it’s final. Fine. But if you will not declare war, then declare someone, anyone, as successor. Or better yet, take a wife and beget one.”
Rhorek pressed a hand over eyes, haunted by the ghosts of the men and women he had seen fall, and the thousands who may fall yet. “Where is the road I envisioned? You have taken it from me, Keth. The road I see now ends with a gaping hole, and the hole is the Abyss.”
~~~~
Kieryn woke as the last tinge of scarlet faded from violet clouds. His head pounded with every heartbeat. He lifted a hand to squeeze his brow but found his fingers, palm, and wrist bundled in clean white linen. Minty smell of silverthorn stung his nose, along with the acidic tang of wolf’s muzzle.
Somewhere on his left, he heard, “About time.”
Kieryn squinted against stabbing candlelight and found Kelyn standing over him, looking happy and scared and curious at the same time.
Kieryn tried to push himself up, but his hand sent fire up his arm. He grunted in surprise and fell back to the pillows. When the burning tapered off to a smolder, he demanded, “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” The happiness in Kelyn’s expression withered.
Kieryn breathed deeply, carefully. His whole body felt as if it had come apart, then fallen roughly back together. “I remember the Assembly. I spilled a bowl of cream on somebody. Torn ear. Rhorek was angry with … Athlem and … Lander. Leshan blocked my view. And voices. Kelyn, I heard voices, but no one spoke them. They warned me … the servant with the torn ear was going to kill Rhorek. Then I saw him running, and then … that’s all.”
“You don’t remember running after him, reaching him before he reached the dais?”
Kieryn pressed his temples with his good hand. The throbbing was sapping his ability to think. “I recall running. Vaguely. Like in a nightmare. I couldn’t run fast enough. I wasn’t going to make it. But I don’t remember what I was going to do. I … what did I do?”